Clearing the air on the demand to postpone the all-party meeting on December 28, Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has said there was no change and the meeting would be held as scheduled.
Stating that he had received a letter seeking postponement of the meeting from Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy in view of the World Telugu Conference, the Union Minister said: “He has requested to postpone the meeting. I have not taken it very seriously.”
He told reporters in New Delhi on Monday that he would hold the meeting on December 28 and discuss the Telangana issue. He said YSR Congress would also be among the parties to be invited for the meeting.
Mr. Shinde said in recent times, some Congress MPs had met him with a request to convene an all-party meeting. He had decided to convene the meeting on their request, he added. On number of representatives to be called for the meeting, the Home Minister said he would write to the parties asking them whether they could send one or want to send more.
Earlier in the morning, Congress MPs from Telangana – Ponnam Prabhakar, Manda Jagannath and G.Vivekananda – called on Mr. Shinde and urged him not to postpone the meeting.
Dr. Vivekananda said that as one or the other Government or private programme is held, there was no need to put off the all-party meeting. He wondered why the Chief Minister was evincing interest in the postponement of the meeting. In Hyderabad, State Ministers raised the pitch for holding the all-party meeting as decided by the Centre.
Deputy CM C. Damodar Rajanarsimha told reporters, after his meeting with PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana at Gandhi Bhavan, that the all-party meeting has to be conducted on December 28 only. Two other Ministers -- D.K. Aruna and P. Sudarshan Reddy -- wondered why there should be postponement of the meeting.
